Category Archives: Ranty ones
Submission and feminism are not mutually exclusive
I want you to spit in my mouth, call me a slut, come all over my face and then respect my opinions on gender politics. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so.
On the obscenity trial
Background: A guy from North London was charged with distributing ‘obscene’ DVDs after a police officer bought some from him. They included lots of lovely (or not-so-lovely, depending on your preferences) gay sex acts, including fisting, BDSM and piss-play.
The acts themselves were legal, what the law frowned upon was distributing DVDs of said acts to people who wanted to crack one off over them. The ‘Obscene Publications Act (OPA)‘ makes it illegal to publish material that is likely to ‘deprave and corrupt.’
Two excellent ladies livetweeted during the trial (see end of this for links to people who know more about it than I do), including not just details of the material but the arguments from the prosecution and defence. It was utterly fascinating: we weren’t just watching people discussing what counts as obscene, we were watching an unfolding debate about whether it’s even acceptable to legislate against the very subjective notion of ‘obscenity’.
Society has always been keen on making moral judgements – it’s what society does. X is good, Y is bad. This is fun and kinky, but that’s just plain wrong. We can’t stop society from having opinions on things, but we probably should take those opinions with a pinch of salt, especially given that in the past they’ve been pretty wrong. Society used to think it was totally unacceptable to have sex outside marriage or (shock horror) be gay.
The defendant was victorious in this case, and was found not guilty on all counts: the jury saw no problem with the material as far as this law was concerned and agreed that it probably wasn’t going to deprave anyone.
This is great news for fisters, watersports fanatics, and gay guys who like to inject saline into the scrotum of a loved one, slap that scrotum around a bit, then sell DVDs of the event to people they met on the internet.
The problem’s still there
But it doesn’t really solve the ultimate problem. The law is still there, which means that we’re still reliant on society to decide what counts as ‘obscene material’. CPS guidance suggests it could include any of these things:
- sexual act with an animal
- realistic portrayals of rape
- sadomasochistic material which goes beyond trifling and transient infliction of injury
- torture with instruments
- bondage (especially where gags are used with no apparent means of withdrawing consent)
- dismemberment or graphic mutilationactivities involving perversion or degradation (such as drinking urine, urination or vomiting on to the body, or excretion or use of excreta)
- fisting
Some of these are clearly extremely niche activities, which are illegal in and of themselves (dismemberment, sex with animals, etc). But some are acts which many normal, healthy people perform, film and watch on a regular basis: piss-play, coprophilia, fisting, bondage, etc.
The DVDs in this week’s obscenity trial featured acts from this list. The fact that the jury found ‘not guilty’ on all counts is a huge step forward for sexual liberties, and indicates that this list of ‘obscene’ things may well be trimmed in the future.
But we still live under a legal system that says society can judge whether sex videos made by consenting adults and sold to consenting adults are ‘obscene’ enough to warrant punishment.
So although having more liberal attitudes helps us trim the list of acts that are considered ‘obscene’, encouraging society to become more liberal isn’t the ideal solution. The solution lies in getting rid of this law.
We need to persuade society that we don’t need a law to criminalise publication of consensual sex acts. We need to tell society that lots of people watch porn and don’t turn into mad perverts desperate for their next fisting fix. We need to tell society to fuck off out of the bedroom and let us shit on each other in peace.
Over to the Obscenity Trial experts:
This is just my opinion – other people have written about the obscenity trial far better than I ever could, and with more knowledge than I have. So for the full story see any or all of these links:
My new favourite lawyer, Myles Jackman, explains why the OPA is an anachronism.
Excellent journalist and swift-thumbed livetweeter Nichi Hodgson discusses why the outcome of the trial is a victory for sexual freedom, and explains why the OPA should be abolished.
For more info and ongoing awesome, check out Lexington Dymock, who was also livetweeting the trial and keeping us up-to-date on the exact nature of the filthy acts that were occurring.
On not having a boyfriend
Hands up who’s been with family over Christmas? And hands up who’s had to have the obligatory conversation with relatives about why you’re still single? Well, If I weren’t typing I’d be waving my hands frantically in the air, then using them to smash things in frustration about people’s unnecessary interference in my life.
Why does anyone think it is OK to ask me when I’m going to get a boyfriend? If you confide in someone that you’re lonely and they offer you dating advice, they’re responding to a specific request. But it’s a hell of a leap to assume that you can quiz your single friends/family members on their relationship status, and then hint to them that they should be working harder to ensure that they’re soon safely ensconced in a loving couple which, by the way, should really get on and pop out some babies soon.
I’m single because I like it
I think I might get this printed on a t-shirt that I can wear to the next family gathering so that I don’t need to waste my breath saying it over and over again.
Being single is brilliant. I can see people I like, avoid people I don’t, fill my diary with dinners and dates and drinking. If I’m in the pub and having a bad time I can go home, safe in the knowledge that I haven’t “thrown a strop” and dragged a partner home with me. If I’m bored of an evening, I can flip through my black book and see who wants to come over.
I can love people, fuck people, get drunk and be sick in the gutter and moan with hungover shame in a pile on the sofa the next day – and none of this will be of significance to anyone other than me.
Don’t assume that ‘alone’ means ‘lonely’
The question ‘when are you going to get a boyfriend?’ rests on the gargantuan assumption that the life I lead is incomplete. I think some family members imagine that I sit at home every night crying into a romance novel, lamenting the gaping, boyfriend-shaped hole in my lonely, miserable heart. I say “I don’t want a boyfriend.” They hear “I can’t get a boyfriend.”
This implies that no one in the history of the world has ever or could ever make an active choice to be alone, because being alone is a Bad Thing.
But of course, those of us who are alone know that it’s not. Being alone is a joyful, wonderful thing. We get to go out when we like, stay in when we like, spend time doing crap DIY, writing blogs or committing ourselves to whimsical projects. We get to drink all the gin in the cupboard, eat whatever food we’ve scraped from the back of the fridge, and then have a victorious wank right in the middle of the lounge.
My biological clock is of no importance
At 27 years old I am now officially ‘pushing 30’, which apparently means that I should be clawing my way into the heart of any available gentleman in the desperate hope that he fertilises my rapidly-dwindling stash of eggs so I can spit out a child or two to give my parents something to coo over.
This isn’t going to happen. Perhaps, years into the future, I’ll change my mind. But for now, the thought of getting pregnant brings me out in a cold, terrified sweat and makes me want to hug close to me all the things I love – my independence, my freedom, my time alone, my beautiful flat with all the things in it that aren’t covered in sick and dribble, and – perhaps most of all – my goddamn money.
I don’t care if time’s running out. Time’s also running out for me to retrain as a barrister or shag John McCririck. I’m not going to rush to do either of these things – they are undesirable things to do, and they aren’t going to become any more desirable just because there’s a limited time in which to do them.
Love hurts
My final and perhaps most important reason for staying single: love hurts. A relationship is the all-or-nothing option. You give everything you have to someone who has the power to destroy the lot on a whim.
If you’re in a relationship, then I’m impressed. You’re willing to lay your heart out on the chopping-block of their affections and trust them not to pound it into a miserable, bloody slab of pain.
At least when I’m single I know that my misery is my own. If I’m wretched it’s because I’ve made myself so, and I’m probably in a reasonable position to fix whatever’s wrong. But in a relationship it’s possible for someone else to make a decision that brings your whole world crashing down around you.
When I wake up in the morning I feel safe knowing that the only person with the power to destroy me is me.
On food and sex
Do you want to lick melted chocolate off my nipples? How about squirting whipped cream all over your cock and letting me noisily slurp it off? Are you willing to drizzle nacho cheese into the crack of my arse then fuck me to a sticky, cheesy completion?
No?
Then you’re probably my kind of guy.
Food in sex is bloody weird. I think my general hatred of it stems from a rather naïve 16 year-old experience in which my boy bought some sort of ‘penis knickerbockerglory kit’ from Ann Summers, covered his cock in cream and chocolate sauce, and completed the fiasco with (I’m not making this up) brightly-coloured hundreds and thousands. He then insisted that I lick off this sticky, sickly mess until I felt so ill I’d rather have spent the afternoon bent over the toilet bowl than the side of the bed.
If you want a blow job, the best way to get one is to unzip your trousers and tell me to give you a blow job. You don’t need to cover it in fucking chocolate – I’m not a reluctant 12 year old, and your cock is not a brussels sprout that you’re forcing me to eat at Christmas. I like sucking your cock, that’s why I’m here.
And conversely, if you don’t want to lick my cunt, then don’t. If you don’t like the taste of it, I’d strongly advise you not to put your face there at all. Smearing it in toothpaste or custard or raspberry jam is just going to make a mess of the bedsheets, and mean you’re concentrating more on cleaning me up than on tonguing my clit until I squeal like a strangled cat.
I like sex more than sweeties
Some people might love the food thing, and if you do then good on you. Someone’s got to keep Ann Summers afloat, after all.
But flavoured/scented/sweet-smelling stuff leaves me cold. Getting messy is fun – ask any splosh fetishist – but the need to make sex taste and smell like dessert removes one of the things that I love most about fucking. The smell of your cock. The smell of your sweat. The beautiful, musky, angry scent of boys.
It’s not just food – flavoured condoms, scented lube and edible underwear can shit off as well. These things make sex unsexy, and fit better behind the counter at Greggs than in my bedroom.
Chocolate, whipped cream, flavoured lube, strawberries, toffee sauce, ice cream, condoms that taste like bananas – they can all fuck off back to the lollipop-scented candifloss-coated shitfuck sweetshop nightmare that they came from. I want your dick to taste like dick.
Sorry sluts, your vagina doesn’t have a ‘clear history’ button
As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, a lot of things make me angry. Selfish commuters, bigoted people, Tories, scented tampons, cider that does not taste like apples and is therefore definitely not cider, etc.
But very recently I experienced a new kind of anger. Someone, who I can only describe as a ‘weapons-grade arsehole’ discovered my blog by searching the phrase “sorry sluts, your vagina doesn’t have a ‘clear history’ button.”
Well. I have since googled this phrase, and discovered that there are a fair few cretins out there who find it hilarious. So now I’m on a mission. I know it’s hard to change someone’s mind on the internet, I believe Charlie Brooker once described internet debate as ‘like hurling shoes at the sky’. But I think there’s a slight possibility that some people just think this phrase is funny, and don’t realise how ignorant and ridiculous it is.
So I wrote this. In the hope that at least one person in the future will search that phrase, come here, and realise that vaginas don’t need a ‘clear history’ button, whether they belong to a slut or not.
sorry sluts, your vagina doesn’t have a ‘clear history’ button
Let us examine why this phrase is utterly odious on a number of different levels.
What is a slut, exactly?
What counts as too many partners? Five? Ten? Twenty? The ‘slut ratio’ when I was a teenager was generally taken to be your age, meaning that you were a slut if you’d fucked more people than you’d had birthdays.
But no doubt this is a cultural thing – there may well be places where it would be considered the height of sluttery for a 20 year old to have fucked three guys. A hundred years ago it would be considered slutty for a woman to have been fucked by anyone other than her husband. What counts as excessive promiscuity is completely subjective, and a ridiculous judgement to make about someone.
Calling someone a ‘slut’ frequently (although not always) smacks of jealousy and resentment, and the word is generally used to make women feel small if they enjoy having sex, or don’t have the squeaky-clean sexual history that archaic-thinking dickheads think they should have. But that shouldn’t matter – what’s happened in the past doesn’t always stamp itself indelibly on someone’s character. Just because someone’s fucked a hundred men before you, that doesn’t mean she’s evil or weak or callous – it just means she likes fucking. And correct me if I’m wrong, but fucking is generally something that we want our partners to enjoy.
I don’t care whether you think I’m a slut
While I give a massive toss about the general attitudes that make women feel like they should ration out their sexual favours as if they’re bestowing precious gifts on the men they deign to sleep with, your individual opinion of my own sex life is of little importance.
It’s really easy, so I’ll keep it short: whether you think I am a slut or not, I don’t give one tenth of an atom of a gram of a portion of a shit. So fuck you.
I wouldn’t push a ‘clear history’ button on my vagina
The phrase “sorry sluts, your vagina doesn’t have a ‘clear history’ button” implies that, if there was a ‘clear history’ button, ‘sluts’ would want to push it. Because they are ashamed. Devastated at their lack of self control. Their inability to refuse an offer of sexual gratification.
Which is, you know, complete and utter bullshit. I’ve slept with a fair few guys – probably not as many as people tend to think based on this blog, but more than I’d gleefully admit to my mother – and I’m glad that I fucked each and every one of them. The hot ones, the not-so-hot ones, the ones who struggled getting it up, the ones who hurt me in a delicious way, the ones I loved, the ones I grew to hate, the ones I cried over and the ones I cried for.
Some of them were awful. Some of them were beautiful. One of them was violent. One of them was gay. One was a virgin so nervous he could barely touch me. All of them did good things to me, and some did very bad things too. But even if there was a magical button that removed any of them from my sexual history, I wouldn’t erase a single second of a single fuck with a single guy I’ve ever had.
I’m not just proud and delighted, I’m grateful. For the fun, for the lessons learnt, for the whip-marks and come-stains and memories I still frequently wank to. I’m grateful to each and every one of them for giving me something to weave into the rich, jizz-soaked tapestry of my lucky, lucky life.
Slut shaming
I’m on a mini-crusade – I need people to know that this shit doesn’t fucking matter. Who a girl has fucked, how many people she’s fucked, how she’s fucked them, etc. Not just because it’s a personal bugbear of mine, but for all the women who are aching with lust, and desperate for cock, and in love with guys and in love with fucking.
For all those women who want to do it but don’t. For the women who’ll leave a first date frustrated and horny, going home alone because they don’t want to ‘give the wrong impression.’ For the teenaged girls who give endless blowjobs but can’t ‘put out’ and get genuine sexual pleasure of their own in case word gets around that they’re easy.
For the guys who don’t care how many people you’ve fucked. For the guys who love a girl with special tricks others have taught her. For the ones who like to watch, and talk, and hear stories of times you’ve been gang-banged in a sex cinema. For all the men and women the world over who love a good fuck, but hate the fucking judgement.
For me. Because I’m slutty and I fucking like it.
At some point in the future I want someone to google that phrase and find this. If you want to, you can help me optimise the fuck out of this blog entry.
If you have a blog and want to link to this, please do it using the phrase
“sorry sluts, your vagina doesn’t have a ‘clear history’ button”
Write your opinions on it, tag them “sorry sluts, your vagina doesn’t have a ‘clear history’ button.” Use subheads and titles including the phrase “sorry sluts, your vagina doesn’t have a ‘clear history’ button”. Send me a link to your entry so I can help you to promote it.
Tweet about it, facebook it, share it with the limited collection of nerds who are in your Google+ circles. Add a link in forums, blog comments, Flickr sets and Wiki-fucking-pedia. Tell your friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Tell your church group. Tell your postman. Tell your Mum.
Spread the word, kids: I’ve fucked a lot of people, and I couldn’t give a fuck.